Kamakawi Phonology

To be quite honest with you (and, you should know, honesty is number one with me), I feel bad including a phonology section for this language, because its phonology is so itsy-bitsy. Nevertheless, here it is: A page on the world wide web. A whole page! No one will ever be able to use the above url so long as I live. Why? Because the tiny little phonology of Kamakawi will be there. Forever! So, here goes.

Consonants

Bilabial

Labio-Dental

Dental

Palatal

Velar

Labio-Velar

Glottal

Stops

p

t

k

' (=ʔ)

Fricatives

f, v

h

Nasals

m

n

Approximants

l

y (=j)

w

So, those are the sounds. As for the rules, well, since there aren't many sounds, there aren't many rules. Yet, rules there are. They are:

/h/ > [ʔ] / V_V ([h] otherwise)

/f/ > [v] / V_V ([f] otherwise)

I think that's it for consonants, so now onto the fabulous vowels!

Fabulous Vowels!

Front

Central

Back

Close

i

u

Close-Mid

ə

Open-Mid

e (=ɛ)

o (=ɔ)

Open

a

Not very exciting, actually. Again, there are only a couple of rules. Here they are:

/a/ > [ə] / when not tonic or pretonic or word-initial ([a] otherwise)

The last thing to note in this phonology section (other than the stress, which is on the penultimate syllable) is that hiatus is possible and frequent. There is, for example, a word "aeiu" which is phonetically [ʔa.ɛ.'i.u], and it means "to go inside" (it's also bimorphemic). And, as you may have noticed, words beginning with vowels really begin with glottal stops--just like words beginning with /ʔ/ really begin with [h]. Funny world, isn't it?